Childs touts state experience for 4th Congressional Race in MA

Monday

Aug 13, 2012 at 12:01 AMAug 13, 2012 at 1:22 PM

Candidate for Massachusetts 4th Congressional seat, Elizabeth Childs said her wealth of public and private sector experience distinguishes her from fellow Republican candidates, David Steinhof and Sean Bielat.

Lee V. Gaines

Candidate for Massachusetts 4th Congressional seat, Elizabeth Childs said her wealth of public and private sector experience distinguishes her from fellow Republican candidates, David Steinhof and Sean Bielat.

“I have a proven track record, and I’m the only one with a proven track record working across the aisle,” Childs said at an editorial board meeting with Wicked Local staff on Friday, Aug. 10.

Childs, a long-time Brookline resident and former Brookline School Committee member, operates a private psychiatric practice in the community. Childs also served as state mental health commissioner under Gov. Mitt Romney.

“I’m running a campaign to unify and bring people together,” Childs said. “I believe it is going to take Democrats, Republicans and Independents all working together, focused like lasers on our fiscal problems.”

A former Democrat, Childs said she switched to the Republican side of the aisle because she felt Democrats were “way too beholden” to public unions.

Both Democrats and Republicans have contributed to the debt issue in America, Childs said, but she said she felt “the Republican Party was more willing to acknowledge that we have got to get our arms around this issue.”

Childs did not have any kind words for outgoing U.S. Rep. Barney Frank. After more than three decades in Congress, Frank announced in November he would retire, citing the reconfiguration of the district, which now includes Milford, Hopedale, Medway and Franklin and lost parts of New Bedford and all of Fall River.

“[Frank] was one of six people in 2008 that had the kind of information America needed to know,” Childs said, referencing the 2008 financial crisis. “He was only one person, he could have sounded the alarm, but he didn’t.”

“You have to deal with the tax code, closing loopholes and deductions and getting government out of the business of spending,” Childs, who supports a bi-partisan tax proposal known as the Simpson-Bowles plan.

Tax increases alone do not solve the problem, nor does simply cutting the defense budget, she said.

Tackling Medicaid, Medicare and social security spending are also necessary to get the country back on its financial feet, Childs said, adding that she advocates raising the age of retirement to between 70 and 72.

A supporter of the Massachusetts health care insurance reform law, which was passed under Romney’s administration in 2006, Childs said she would vote to repeal President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, granted it could be replaced with another plan.

“If you are going to take something down, you better know before what you are going to replace it with,” she said.

Childs said she believes all Americans should have access to quality health care, and preexisting conditions should be covered, but that reform should be determined on a “state-by-state” basis “for very practical reasons.”

If Childs wins her party’s nomination in the September primary, she’ll likely go head to head with Democratic frontrunner, Joe Kennedy III.

“I don’t know what Joe Kennedy’s message is,” Childs said. “If I get as far as being able to run against him, I’m sure I’ll hear it.”

If Childs doesn’t prevail in the primary, she said, “I will support the Republican nominee, whoever that happens to be.”